Another gem from the limitless files of the Cinema Retro Archive! If you think its a fairly new trend for anxious movie fans to go to extremes to get opening day tickets to a specific movie, think again. This student from Southern Methodist University in Dallas decided to camp overnight to ensure his fraternity brothers were able to get the first tickets to go on sale for the Burton-Taylor epic Cleopatra in 1963. The irony of the film's fate is that it was one of the highest grossing movies in history and should have been a blockbuster, but it was compromised by horrendous cost over-runs. (Note the posters on the wall for Jackie Gleason's Pappa's Delicate Condition.)

It's one of the all time great comedies, and certainly the biggest in scope. Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was the first Cinerama production to use a single lens format instead of three separate cameras. The star-packed comedy epic was a world wide hit. Here is a rare ad from its opening engagement in London. 

This is old-fashioned marketing from 1963. The Fine Arts Theatre in Los Angeles hired two young women to ride around on scooters in front of the theater to promote Jessica, a new film starring up-and-coming starlet Angie Dickinson as a free spirited girl with a penchant for driving a scooter. If you're old enough to remember these types of promotional techniques, you probably also remember "Ladies Nights" where female patrons were given free dish ware (we're not kidding!)